


Iron-Clad Philosophy

by Anti_Mattering



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Death and Reincarnation, Gen, Introspection, It's all a big circle, if only he showed up in SEVENS already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28725375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_Mattering/pseuds/Anti_Mattering
Summary: The never-ending life and times of a simple man who just can't seem to stay away.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Iron-Clad Philosophy

How many times had it been?

He'd asked himself that quite a lot lately. In fact, how many times had he asked that question? He'd lost count so long ago. This was the kind of thing he'd always start thinking about when he got nostalgic. Or maybe a better word would be introspective. Whatever it was he was feeling, it was making him recount his past again.

The first time around (was it the first time?), he seemed like an ordinary student. A hall monitor to be specific. He kept himself busy tormenting his classmates. Theft and assault were his bread and butter during that time as he played at being someone important.

A part of him still looked back on all of this with a certain fondness despite having grown enough to realize his wrongdoing. He could pretend like there was something deeper to his abuse – that he was some sort of victim of circumstance with a tragic backstory that would justify his behavior – but that would just mean lying. The truth was that he did those things because he enjoyed them. He was bigger and stronger than everyone else and he wanted what they had, so why shouldn't he have been able to take it?

Things took a turn for the worse once he set his sights on that one kid, though. On the surface, he seemed smaller and weaker than anyone else, but there was a kind of strength inside him he never even imagined could be real. There was also a darkness, big and imposing and unknowable that radiated off of him like a black sun the night they fought that supplied that strength. Needless to say, he bit off far more than he could chew with that one.

For a while, that set him straight. After an interesting few months of recovering from a traumatic episode, he finished his schooling and entered the adult world. Deciding to put his skills to good use, he became a police officer.

He then promptly went right back to where things had started. A callous brute, protecting and serving weren't very high on his list of priorities during that time. He'd do the bare minimum to get through the work day, then spend the rest of his free time slacking off and living it up as best as his salary could provide. When he felt bored on the job, he'd find some unlucky soul to hassle in the street. It was a simple life, but he was content.

He only ever used his gun once in the line of duty. It was kind of miraculous in a way. The old him probably wouldn't have had that kind of restraint, but the specter of his past humiliation and humbling still hung over him all those years later. He'd learned not to take things too far like he had before.

As for the time he fired his weapon, though, there wasn't much to report there – it hadn't ended up doing anything. The man he'd been trying to shoot walked right into his bullets, barely acknowledging they even existed. He didn't remember much after that save for the darkness. It was a cold, lonely darkness nothing like that kid's.

Soon enough, though, that also passed. He found himself back in his usual routine surprisingly quickly, that man and his darkness fading away like a bad dream. The rest of his life wasn't all that eventful. He had a few friends and eventually a fairly nice house with a great big rottweiler that slept on top of him every night. He never managed to marry despite his best efforts. That wasn't too bad, though. It was still a good life.

Like all people, he would eventually grow old and die. Or...would he? He didn't really remember dying. Does anyone _remember_ dying? The point he was so poorly making was that he couldn't really remember when that life ended and the next begin, assuming there was a single point where that could be identified.

Things had changed quite a bit since his last go around, though he stayed about the same. At first, at least. His early life and school days were anything but stressful, spending his time picking on other children much like he had before. At least this time he was being a bit more constructive once he entered high school and became a member of the public morals committee, pushing people around so that they'd conform to school rules.

Then something interesting happened – the end of the world. Well, sort of. That's what it seemed like at the time. It would be years and years before he finally got the full story, but the version he'd heard as a young adult was that a natural disaster split a portion of the city off from the rest of Japan. The people on his half were the lucky ones, life returning to normal after a short while of confusion.

Those on the other half, though, weren't quite so fortunate. Relief efforts kept up for the next few years, but it was soon decided that this new island should just fend for itself. Never mind that that was sort of an impossible task given the mass amount of damage caused by the disaster and the untold casualties. No, the people on his side just decided that the "Satellite scum" were just too lazy and stupid to rebuild. And after all the effort they went through building factories and trash sorting plants for them to work in.

Like before, he'd joined law enforcement after graduation. The names might have changed, but it was essentially the same job. He did get a pretty spiffy motorcycle now, though. This time around, he did at least hope to do some genuine good for society. Not that he'd set out to be some corrupt cop the last time, but he really hadn't accomplished much of note during that time. Here, he'd really endeavor to try.

Immediately after graduating from the academy, he was stationed on that terrible little island off the coast. What a slap in the face! He'd worked hard and made it to the top of his class (well, pretty close to the top), and they just sent him here to wallow in the garbage? Pathetic.

He was ashamed to admit it, but he'd swallowed the prejudice they'd taught him without hesitation. At this point, he barely considered the people he was meant to protect out here to be people. He'd joke with the other officers about the "trash" they'd spook riding through the streets or the hooligans they'd be a little too enthusiastic to rough up or humiliate in a card game.

Unlike before, however, he didn't really enjoy any of this. Hurting people just didn't feel like it once did. Maybe he'd changed too much after all. It was just that something inside him told him that the way he was treating these people was wrong. Even so, he was still a party to the repression of the lower class on the island. Guilty as his conscience might be from all of this, the job put food on the table and, admittedly, gave him a sense of importance he'd been lacking for most of this life.

He did his best to keep up the status quo despite his doubts and misgivings about all of this. It's not like he could make a difference even if he embraced them. He couldn't single-handedly fix all of these poor losers' problems. Trying would be foolish. Plus he'd just be putting a target on his own back if he went against the grain. Might even lose his job. No, he just had to keep his head down and do the work.

While it wasn't quite as dramatic as the supposed end of the world from before, his life did change dramatically after a while in that job. Some punk on a bike of his own. He'd heard about him, but that night was when they first met. They played a game of Duel Monsters then with one of that man's friends on the line. Needless to say, that man won.

That wouldn't be the end of the story for the two of them. Something about that game awakened something inside him. Whether you could call it pride or his conscience finally overpowering his restraint, he began to change once again. It wasn't too dissimilar to his loss from all those years back, though it was a fair bit less traumatizing.

After that, he and that man had quite a few run ins with each other, even facing down the actual apocalypse on several occasions. Through it all, he continued to change. That man who he one day hoped to call a friend had forced him out of his narrow mindset. He reminded him of the similarities between the people from his city and those in the slums, as well as what it meant to be truly honorable.

Even after things eventually settled down in the world, the two stayed in contact for many years. Despite this, he could never shake the feeling he hadn't fully earned this friendship. What had he really done for it? There were a lot of skeletons in his closet from back in his days of enforcing the brutal regime in the slums with plenty he still couldn't forgive himself for. At least he could try to make amends by leading people into a better direction, or even just by picking up the tab for his friend's glasses of milk at the bar.

The rest of that life was fairly peaceful. Outside of a few incidents later down the line, the most excitement came on the occasion the city hosted a card tournament. He even joined a few when he felt up to it, though he never managed to place. Still, he was a good sport about it, and he always had the chance to cheer on his friend.

He wasn't sure when things ended this time around. What he remembered next, though, was quite a bit different. Of particular note was the fact that he no longer seemed to be human. This was the Astral World, wasn't it? Everything was so blue and it was so much easier to get around now that gravity wasn't a concern.

Someone smarter than him would probably have more profound words on becoming an alien, but he wasn't all that smart. He wasn't even sure how long this go around stuck. Whatever he was now, time didn't seem to affect him as it had in the past. "Growing up" didn't seem to last long at all, his body and consciousness forming almost as soon as he split off from a much larger, wetter thing like himself.

Becoming an "adult" was something else entirely. It was a process that just didn't seem to end, days going and going, on and on without much to differentiate them from one another. He got sick of it fairly quick, or at least what he could call quick in this never ending cycle. The head honcho here seemed obsessed with some kind of purity, forcing everyone else in this place to obey or face the consequences for "endangering" their people. He didn't have to be all that smart to realize this was what actually put them in danger.

Then a more pressing danger made itself known. Out of nowhere, the sky began to rain death on a daily basis. From the murmurings he heard from others, something called "Barian" was responsible. Whatever they were called didn't matter too much compared to keeping as many people as possible safe, old instincts from times gone by reawakening as he helped others to shelter whenever the incidents started up. On the plus side, at least things were happening now.

As suddenly as they started, though, these incidents eventually stopped. Was Barian defeated? If so, good riddance. That jerk really made of mess of things here. Things were quiet for a time after that, the people of that world returning to their stagnation like nothing had happened.

Without any warning, however, another attack came. This one was more intense than any before it, decimating whole swathes of the population in its short duration. Among those lost were several of the people he'd come to know. Some he'd even considered his friends. It was...hard to accept.

And through it all, the one who called himself the leader of their people did nothing. From what he knew, they were all supposed to just wait as some special agent or whatever took care of business. If his patience hadn't been worn thin from all the attacks, the complete lack of a response to them had certainly done it.

It wasn't long after that he first encountered another of their kind. She sounded completely crazy at first as she preached about sensing his doubt and the power of Chaos or whatever. He rebuffed her immediately, but she persisted. Slowly, she wore him down, every deranged word out of her mouth starting to make more and more sense, especially when she finally put into words the deep unease among their people causing so much stagnation.

For a time, all the group could do was wait. It seemed like waiting around was all they did here. And as they waited, he saw those around him begin to grow sicker. Their bodies were literally falling apart, their minds slowing and growing more jumbled. He wasn't immune.

When things seemed lost, their waiting around not amounting to anything, salvation finally came. It was a young boy of all things, and a human at that. He was saying something about looking for one of them. It didn't make much sense, but the leader of the group seemed to know which way to point him.

Before she did, however, she instructed him to touch all of them. Not in a shady way, obviously. While he still didn't fully understand it, this boy held some kind of power related to the Chaos she'd spoken of before. Just by making contact with each of them, he restored their health. It was a miracle. And just as quickly, he left.

It wasn't over just like that, though. Not long after, their entire congregation was surrounded by that big blowhard's golden apparitions. Quarantined like a disease. He was ready to fight back (that Chaos stuff had him feeling better than he had in hundreds of years), but the others held him back. Instead, they simply had to watch from the sidelines as that boy fought on their behalf. And, just like that, he won. Another miracle.

There was just one problem. Well, several, but the first was that the person the boy had come to find was in a sorrier state than the rest of them had been before his arrival. That was something they could at least help him with, everyone in this world providing at least a small bit of their restored energy to revive him.

The next was the giant pillar of crackling light in the sky. This was decidedly a problem he couldn't help with, forced to watch from the sidelines as the boy and his friend went off to another world to deal with it. Compared to his at least somewhat more proactive past, this was a hard pill to swallow. Still, things did eventually turn out well, his world and its people moving forward into a better future.

He wasn't sure exactly when things started again. As far as he could tell, he just ran out of energy one day and faded away. It was...peaceful, strangely enough. After that, he found himself back here, a human once more.

Though he normally had just vague memories of the past, this time around left a special sort of longing deep in his spirit – the memory of being able to fly. It was probably something everyone dreamed about once in a while, but he actually got to experience it as an alien. Losing that was like losing a limb.

Duel Monsters had changed since he'd been away, and he couldn't be happier about that. Turns out other people had been longing to fly, too. Even after seeing so much, he really hadn't seen anything like this before. People and their cards side-by-side as they danced through the sky and across the field.

Maybe it was rash, but he decided this time around he'd go pro. He practiced night and day to get even stronger than he'd ever been, ignoring school and other responsibilities. So what if it was risky? He'd just get another shot at things. Sure, he wasn't consciously aware of that, but it was still true.

Against all odds, he actually did it. He'd gone pro. The world knew his name after making it to the top four of a major tournament, a sizable fan following coming shortly after that. Boy, could he play the heel in his matches.

He met quite a few interesting people over those next few years. He even got to take on the guy who invented this style of dueling (that was one hell of a day). Unfortunately, fate caught up to him one day. He knew he shouldn't have gone up that high (there wasn't even an Action Card to get, he was just showing off). He shouldn't have gotten so far from his opponent to make their attempt to catch him after he fell so fruitlessly. He shouldn't have attempted this stunt without any cards to fall back on himself.

It was an abrupt and gruesome end to that one. In the end, at least he got to fly one last time.

The bitterness that left him with didn't do anything good for him in the next go around. He'd fallen back into old habits once again and took to picking fights with his peers during adolescence. He knew enough now to understand how pointless all of that was, but he didn't care. What was the point of doing anything if it could all slip away in an instant? And even if it didn't, he'd just come back around.

If nothing else, he was at least not nearly as bad as he used to be. Probably. Hopefully. For what it was worth, he wasn't going after those too much weaker than himself this time. He and a few friends much preferred to take on others like themselves, beating the absolute hell out of other kids from dusk 'till dawn most days of the week. It was no way to live, but it gave him some sense of excitement.

That came to a crashing end after a short bit, though. Turns out there was always going to be someone stronger than him out there no matter how many times he went around. Some country punk who had no business being that tough laid him and his boys out but good. They deserved it, sure, but he could have at least had the decency to let them get more than a couple good hits in.

For whatever reason, getting humiliated always seemed to force him to make a change. A lot like before, he left the thug life behind and cleaned up his act. It was probably for the best; he didn't have much of a right to continue acting tough after he lost that bad.

That was when things started to get a little fuzzy. What happened after that? Kind of unclear. It always took a bit before how things ended came back to him. Wait, did that mean things ended? Damn, that felt way too short.

Come to think of it, he seemed to be having a lot of trouble remembering things. He'd just recalled all of that, but so many details were missing. And then there was the biggest question of all – who was he after all of this?

Ushio. That was his name, at least. It always seemed to be his name. It didn't stand out much or have much significance, so why did it seem to follow him around like this? He'd probably never know.

He didn't know why he got to be so many Ushios. What made him so special? Did everyone get this kind of treatment? What was the purpose of living so many times? It might all just be some kind of joke as far as he could tell, or maybe he was meant to learn some kind of lesson. If it was the latter, he could barely even keep track of where he was half the time, so figuring out any deep cosmic truths seemed like an impossible task at this point.

Come to think of it, where was he right now? His instincts told him it was "nowhere", but even nowhere had to be somewhere, right? He couldn't see anything to try to figure it out. The other four senses weren't responding, either.

Actually, this place was starting to feel familiar. Maybe it was where he'd started, or at least where he always returned to when time was up. How long had he been here this time? Hard to say given time didn't seem to flow in any meaningful way while he was here. Just a whole lot of nothing while he waited.

What was he waiting for? Oh, that was obvious. He was waiting for the next time. It was almost a routine at this point. Whenever one ended, he'd begin again just like before.

Something told him it was almost time now. Who would he be this time? What would he experience? What would he learned? He'd learned by now that there wasn't really any way to predict that sort of thing. In the end, all he could do was rush into it headfirst and try a little harder than last time.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time and only now managed to write and finish it. Took me a while since I had to check a lot of stuff to make sure there wasn't anything I'd missed.
> 
> Ushio as a concept has always been kind of weirdly funny. Like, why this character in particular did they choose to always cameo in each show? He's literally just a huge jobber nobody from the first chapter Dark Yugi fucks up. He's all but cut out of the DM anime, too, so why have him cameo in all the others and be a main character in 5D's? If they were pulling obscure manga villains for stuff like that, they had tons of choices, yet they settled on him.
> 
> That's kind of the question running through the story, too, with Ushio questioning why he gets to live so many times. And just like in the story, I haven't really figured out that answer. This may serve as an introduction more than a full story if I decide to go back and expand a little on each of his lives from each of the show eras, but assume this is complete for the time being.
> 
> I think what most people are going to have a problem with here is that 5D's is another life from DM and GX. For some reason, it's getting popular to say that they all happened within, like, a couple decades of each other, but that's not true. Even putting aside the major technological advancements that can't be accounted for naturally, all the main characters from the other series who lived in Domino are dead, indicated by Kaiba no longer being a presence at Kaiba Corp. and the Pegasus J. Crawford Memorial Foundation. What, did they all just happen to die during Zero Reverse at the same time? I'm not going to say it's, like, centuries later, but it's at least a lifetime.
> 
> That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading. Share if you enjoyed. Always remember to bully children and extort them for cash.


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